Couple of interesting articles today regarding two of the country’s most vilified industries.

Mark Clayton at the Christian Science Monitor breaks down the efforts of House Democrats to cut $14 billion in tax breaks and financial incentives for big oil over the next 10 years and shift them to renewable energy. Clayton does a good job of explaining what is and isn’t on the chopping block.

For instance, two important breaks worth about $2 billion a year aren’t on the chopping block. One allows “smaller, independent oil companies to deduct 15 percent of sales revenue to reflect the declining value of their investment.” The other “permits big oil companies to immediately deduct 70 percent of their “intangible drilling costs,” such as the cost of wages, supplies, and site preparation. Smaller companies are permitted to deduct all of those costs.”

There’s also a nice graphic, compiled by an organization called Earth Track, breaking down where the nation’s energy subsidies went in 2006. Not surprisingly, oil and gas got the lion’s share at $39 billion, easily outpacing second-place nuclear’s $9 billion and third-place coal’s $8 billion. Interestingly though, half the subsidy was attributed to defense costs to keep sea lanes open for oil transport in the Persian Gulf (it does not count direct Iraq war spending.)

Big tobacco was also in someone’s crosshairs Thursday from the looks of a story published in the Boston Globe. Staff writer Stephen Smith writes about a new Harvard study that concludes “data supplied by tobacco companies strongly suggest that in recent years manufacturers deliberately boosted nicotine levels in cigarettes to more effectively hook smokers.”

The study, conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, found “that the amount of nicotine that could be inhaled from cigarettes increased an average of 10 percent from 1998 through 2004.”